The World’s Fastest Supercomputer Belongs to Japan

Japan outpointed China on the Top500 leaderboard of the world's fastest supercomputers with its latest machine called 'K'.

Japan dethrone’s China on the Top500 leaderboard of the world’s fastest supercomputers this year. Simply called ‘K’, Japan’s machine is more than three times faster than China’s Tianhe-1A. The K computer also features a staggering 8.2 petaflops, 548,352 2GHz SPARC64 VIIIfx cores packed in 672 cabinets, while the whole machine has a power draw of 9,898kW.

University of Knoxville’s Professor Jack Dongarra, who runs the Top500, claims that Japan’s K computer tantamount to one million linked desktops. Moreover, the owners of K computer are planning to expand the number of cabinets from 672 to 800 in the days to come. Built by Fujitsu, Japan’s supercomputer costs £6.2 million per year to run and uses electricity that can power 10,000 homes. Japan’s K Supercomputer is currently situated at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe.